The Best She Could Ask For
by ThnksFrThMmrs87
Summary: Post Ep for Veritas. Stella's a good listener, and Don's more than willing to talk.


Note From The Author—Okay, so this came completely out of nowhere for me. Mostly as much as I loved the premiere I didn't feel like Sam was there nearly enough or that Flack interacted with her nearly enough. The way he talked to her left a lot of questions in my mind, and I'm inferring a lot, but I couldn't help but put this one down.

Disclaimer—I don't own the characters of CSI: NY

She wasn't surprised to see him at the bar when she came in. The case had been difficult for all of them before they found Mac, and things had gotten worse for him afterwards. She knew about his sister's connection to the case, but it was painfully clear that there was something more than just her involvement that was bothering him. So with that in mind, she took a seat next to him.

"Hey. Why am I not surprised to find you here?" she questioned.

Flack saluted her with a glass of red wine that was edging towards empty. "Long couple of days," he commented. "What are you doing here?"

Stella motioned to the bartender to bring her a glass of whatever Don was having before she turned on her stool to face him. "I imagine I had about the same thing in mind that you did when you came in," she told him. "Though I'm guessing you have a somewhat more complicated reason."

"Obviously you know about my sister," he commented, though there was a hard edge to it.

"Yeah I do, and if you want to talk about it I'm here."

He sighed. "Sam's… she's a handful I guess."

There was affection in his voice, and it made her smile. "It's clear how much you love her," Stella told him.

"I do love her," he said with a sigh. "She's this beautiful vibrant woman." He shook his head, his eyes meeting Stella's; a hint of sadness showing in the blue. "I still have a hard time remembering she's a grown woman now. Then she lends her car to someone she hardly knows, who turns out to be involved in a bank robbery, and gets a 'hey how you doin'' from a coked up idiot one of our officers picked up off the street. Then it's really difficult to forget that she's a grown up."

"She doesn't make the best decisions I take it."

Don laughed, though there wasn't a trace of humor in it. "That would be the understatement of the century. She does something stupid and she calls me, and if I don't answer she calls our father."

Stella nodded. "And when she calls your father you have to hear about it from him," she said, understanding then.

"Got it in one." He downed the rest of his wine and asked for another when the bartended brought Stella's. "My father and I have a hard time seeing eye to eye; pretty sure that's not any secret."

"No," she granted. "I've picked up on that."

He shook his head. "He's a hard man and even harder to deal with. Sam has a problem now, she comes to me; because it's better that I deal with her. That way neither of us has to hear what huge screw ups we are if she calls my father," Flack said, bitterness seeping into his voice.

Stella reached out to take his hand. "I'm sorry Don."

"Don't worry about it Stell," he told her, squeezing her hand. "There's not a whole hell of a lot that any of us can do about it. Sam is who she is, my father is who he is, and I am who I am. None of us could change that even if we wanted to."

"So what now?" she asked, lacing their fingers together and squeezing back, offering her support.

Don let out a heavy sigh. "Sam wouldn't let me take her home from the station, so she went by herself. So now she goes back to tending bar, if that lasts any longer than any of her other jobs. We talk every now and then once we both stop being mad, and in a few weeks or months or whatever, she calls me because something else has gone wrong."

"And you'll bail her out, because she's your sister."

He nodded. "Because she's my baby sister."

"It may not be the best of circumstances Don, and for that I'm sorry; but I can tell you for sure that you're the best big brother that Sam could ask for."

This time when he laughed the humor was back. "Mind telling her that for me?" he asked.

Stella looked over at him with a smile. "You never know, maybe I will."


End file.
